


growth spurts

by fated_addiction



Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 14:32:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1057904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fated_addiction/pseuds/fated_addiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary makes a choice, Francis makes a choice, and Bash makes a choice, but it's nothing to be seen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	growth spurts

**Author's Note:**

> General spoilers for _Chosen_.

Mary makes a choice.

“You could go after him,” Bash says, after awhile, after Francis disappears and his footsteps echo. The hallways are empty and dangerous.

“I could,” she agrees, and she wants to, desperately, because since she's been in France her childhood is not her childhood and her decisions are more than mere reflections. This is a lonely engagement and it unsettles her in the eeriest of ways. She shifts and leans against the wall. “But it would be most unwise,” she murmurs, “for my pride and his.”

He chuckles.

It's a dry sound and she picks it out just as easily as she watches him. His face is streaked with dirt. His eyes are handsome and bright; he's flushed – with what, she wonders, the kill? That soldiered lust, as her mother once called it. He watches her just as intensely though and she sees bits of herself this way. She wonders if this is why she's kissed him.

Bash shifts and stands over her. His hand curls into knuckles and they rest against the wall as she looks up at him, her chin tilted.

“I'm tired,” she defends.

“I know.” His eyes seem brighter. His mouth slims and he reaches forward, his fingers looping into the ends of her hair. It curls against his palm too. “I know you try and hide it. I know my brother's driven by every desire to rationalize place, position, and power. I know I cannot give you what I want.”

“You sound dreadfully arrogant.”

Bash cracks a smile. Mary looks away. She studies the cracks in the stone, her hand slight and then away from his mouth.

“You cannot live here with regret, Mary.” He steps back and then she can breathe once more. Her hands slim at her dress. “It may be the cause of all that you do,” he says.

Mary nods, or tries to. Bash does turn finally, only halfway, and that speaks enough for itself.

 

 

 

Francis makes a choice and Mary, Mary who remains a lot stronger on all his tells than people understand, can smell and taste _Olivia_ in the air. Catherine's arrogance weighs in just as well and she remains, just serene enough, playing quietly under the older Queen's skin while her own heart manages to just crawl.

“Mary,” Lola murmurs, just after all the other disappear to their rooms. Her oldest friend slides an arm through and under hers, just as they stand at the windows. Mary keeps a gaze to the grounds; there is still ash, she remembers. “Mary,” Lola says again, firmly.

“I'm all right.”

Does she miss the nuns? Perhaps, she thinks. The false security did bring some sort of space, space that she didn't even understand. She squints still, eyeing her reflection in glass. She worries, she knows, about Francis, about all her girls, about Bash and France and the English, and the slight, over eager complications of what it means to be an engaged Queen.

Her mouth is dry and she smiles, just slightly, turning and leaning against the window. She untangles from Lola and smoothes her hands over her gown. She wears herself as a Queen and meets her old friend's gaze.

“He's done it,” she says quietly.

Lola's expression is unreadable. Then she turns surprised. “You think?”

“Mmm,” she nods. She studies the dim light in the bedroom. She does not sleep much anymore. The sheets have been changed, the blankets, and the amount of guards. But she does not trust her eyes to close. “I'm not angry,” she murmurs. “Perhaps, I'm well-past that. I suppose I pushed him to it, but then again being a King allows for too much freedom and a Queen is only worn as a name in these walls, it seems.”

“You're taking this well,” Lola says carefully. She smiles sadly, reaching for Mary. Her fingers touch her cheek and Mary drops her shoulders. “Or as best as you can,” she murmurs.

“What else can I do?”

Lola doesn't answer. She cannot.

 

 

She finds herself alone, much later, wandering up to her old rooms. She isn't really alone; the guards at her door linger out of sight for the most part and because she let them see her leave.

Francis' workshop is untouched. The hilts are just where he has left them, the first time he showed them to her, dusty in gold and silver. Her fingers run against the grooves and she thinks to herself _I want to learn_ and the thought, in name, is wildly like she used to be. She wonders what else French will take from her as well.

It's quiet though, and she likes that it's quiet, she needs it to be quiet but not quiet enough for her to hear her own thoughts. She does not miss home. There are complications and secrets waiting for her there, between her mother and the English. She thinks of the small stack of letters she keeps between her silks, the confidences of her mother and her worries and as always, _I do not want you to be like me, my daughter_ because mothers and daughters are very much like all the fathers and sons.

Then she hears the door close.

Mary does not turn. “You've been neglecting your secrets,” she murmurs. Her words are sharp and her mouth twitches.

“You're awake,” Francis greets, but she does not turn. She listens to his boots shuffle forward. He pauses somewhere behind her, almost waiting.

She remains facing away.

“Am I not allowed to be?” 

He sighs. “Mary.”

“You are not the only one who lives with their choices,” she says. Her voice remains even. She is not placating him, or excusing him. “And I am not as naïve as you wish me to be. France is not my home and as much as I have these fleeting fantasies, I am more than aware that I am no girl.”

“I did not say that,” he says, and he moves to her, stepping around her and leaning against the window. She's picked up one of the hilts and he watches her fingers and the gold in her hand, instead of catching her gaze. Then he hesitates. It's a mistake. “How do you know?”

“You're terribly transparent,” she says gently.

“Mary –”

“And yet you accuse me of the same things. I admit to doing things out of irritation and angry and because I am more than headstrong from time to time. And,” she pauses, shaking her head. “It's not secret that your mother enjoys the weight of my misery.”

His mouth twists and he steps forward. He doesn't touch her and part of her just wants to shift and lean forward, only a bit into him. Just a boy and just a girl, she remembers. She remembers smiling.

“A king –” and he stumbles, just as she sighs. Her eyes are bright, hard, and she tilts her head to him, slowly and almost defiantly. “I won't apologize,” he murmurs. “It seems crass and I didn't –”

“Want it to happen again? Hoping to punish me a bit more for Bash, kissing him when I was drunk and angry and hopeless?” She shakes her head, sighing. “You are right, you know. Things are much different for the two of us. You have allowances as a king, mistresses and choices. You weigh decisions as decisions are meant to be. Was Olivia a calculated risk as well?”

“I didn't promise anything,” he murmurs.

“And how is that different from promising me? Little by little – you forget that I have much more at stake than what you do.”

This is not how she wanted to talk about it. She thinks she's given into her own sensibility and bit back any sort of desire to recoil. She wants Olivia gone. She wants Catherine to own her disdain.

She reaches for his hand then, her fingers smoothing over his and into his palm. She places the hilt into it gently, watching him. His eyes are wide and dark, the slight frown creasing into his mouth. He looks at her and doesn't know where to put her, that much she can tell. She can also see him stand right with her; he doesn't want to let her go.

Mary presses onto her toes and she leans in, her mouth sliding against his jaw. She breathes and hears him sigh, shakily, just as her mouth moves to hover over his ear. She's pressed into his chest and they are both holding onto the hilt. Her eyes close for a moment.

“I don't want to regret you,” she says.

 

 

 

Bash makes a choice, but it's nothing to be seen.

The castle is full of secrets and corners and Francis is busy avoiding her, Catherine is gloating, and her girls are watching her fringes. She will not say how she ends up in a crevice of the castle, her back pressed against the stone. It's cool and her cloak catches against a hook.

But none of that matters.

Know this: her fingers lace through Bash's shirt, but she doesn't kiss him and he doesn't kiss her, there is more intimacy in a gesture and he watches her watch as she watches him watch her and she feels herself slowly, surely forget what it's like to breathe. She wants to tell him that doesn't not love him, even heeding both Francis' and Lola's warnings. A man is different a boy. A man loves and hates on equal wait. She knows that he's changed and when he smiles at her, she feels it in her bones, as it crawls against her skin, as his teeth just – _just_ graze her jaw and it's this, him and her and if he were to push a little closer, his hips would be resting against hers. She can tell herself that she loves Francis and she does; it's as if loving and missing someone were nothing more than the same, sweet sentiment. There are smaller moments too; Bash's fingers at her hip, burning through the silk and the thickness of her cape; they hear voices and his head rests just above her shoulder, more into the stone than her skin; they have both killed for her, she thinks, and that holds an even stranger allure. She does not love Bash and does not make any promises for her to hear. He does not ask. She does not think that she could.

Mary knows that she is changing.

She wears the face of a queen.


End file.
